Exploring exercise adherence and quality of life among veteran, novice, and dropout trainees.

Introduction: The purpose of this study was to identify and reveal the different contexts, variables, and factors that may influence adherence to physical activity among veteran, novice, and dropout trainees, such as the frequency of the weekly training units, the trainees preferred type of exercise, the purpose of the physical activity, and the relationship between support and supervision by fitness instructors and professionals. This study also examined the relationships between trainees, seniority and the strength of the habit and adherence to physical activity, the effects of personal variables such as age and gender on adherence to physical activity, and how the seniority and adherence of trainees may affect their quality of life. Methods: A total of 460 participants drawn from the broader Israeli exercise community, which encompasses a diverse range of individuals within the general adult population, were engaged in this study. These participants included seasoned exercisers, individuals who had recently initiated exercise routines, and those who had previously engaged in physical activity. Each participant completed a comprehensive set of questionnaires, including the Self-Report Habit Index, the Exercise Adherence Rating Scale, and the World Health Organization (WHO) Quality of Life Scale. In addition to the questionnaire responses, demographic data and inquiries concerning their physical activity were also collected. Results: The results show that the average frequency of the weekly training units of veteran trainees was significantly higher than that of novice trainees: 3.95 and 2.93, respectively (p < 0.0001). We found no significant differences between novice and veteran trainees regarding their training goal preferences (p = 0.07). Veteran trainees who had been in training for more than a year appeared to have higher self-efficacy since 31.16% reported receiving no supervision compared to 16.67% among novice trainees. In addition, people over 45 appear to have more health-related goals compared to their younger counterparts (p < 0.001). The quality of life scores of the trainees was related to their seniority in physical training, but only by a small magnitude (R2 = 0.06), p < .001). Those who trained in resistance training showed the greatest rate of adherence in relation to flexibility and aerobic training (p < 0.001), and women preferred more body toning and had more weight loss goals than men (p < 0.001). Discussion: The results indicate that there are central and important factors that may affect adherence to physical activity, and that all these aspects must be taken into account when planning a training program or when there is a desire to maintain or increase adherence to physical activity. The research findings indicate that the main factors that can influence adherence to physical activity are identifying and increasing the trainee's self-efficacy, maintaining weekly training units with sufficient frequency to form a habit and incorporating resistance training into the training regime, as resistance training has shown high levels of adherence. Moreover, it seems that people with different degrees of experience in physical training have distinct and varied training goals, and there is no one goal that fits all. In addition, specific factors such as age and gender must also be taken into account, because the age and gender of the trainees may significantly affect the goals of physical training.

Narcissism and Exercise Addiction: The Mediating Roles of Exercise-Related Motives.

The present research examined whether the associations that narcissistic personality features had with exercise addiction were mediated by particular motives for engaging in exercise in a large Israeli community sample (N = 2629). The results revealed that each aspect of narcissism was positively associated with exercise addiction. Narcissistic admiration and narcissistic rivalry had similar positive indirect associations with exercise addiction through the interpersonal motive for exercise. However, these aspects of narcissism diverged in their indirect associations with exercise addiction through psychological motives, body-related motives, and fitness motives for exercise such that these indirect associations were positive for narcissistic admiration but negative for narcissistic rivalry. Narcissistic vulnerability had positive indirect associations with exercise addiction through body-related motives and fitness motives that were similar to those observed for narcissistic admiration. These results suggest that exercise-related motives may play important roles in the associations that narcissistic personality features have with exercise addiction. The discussion will focus on the implications of these results for understanding the complex connections between narcissism and exercise addiction.

Dispersion-box modeling investigation of the influences of gasoline, diesel, M85 and E85 vehicle exhaust emission on photochemistry.

Alternative transportation fuels (ATFs) can reduce air pollution. However, the influence of conventional fuels-diesel and gasoline, and particularly ATFs on photochemical air pollution is not well-characterized, limiting assessments of ATFs and air quality. This is mainly due to frequent use of lumped chemical mechanisms by related atmospheric modeling. Here we hypothesized that applying a chemical mechanism that is specifically developed according to both emission fractions and photochemical ozone creation potential of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) is key to gaining reliable insights into the impact of transportation fuels on photochemistry. We used a heterogeneous chemical mechanism with 927 reactions and relatively detailed emission inventories to specifically meet the requirements for reliable simulation of the effect of exhaust emissions from vehicles fueled by selected model fuels-diesel, gasoline, and mixtures of 15% gasoline with 85% ethanol (E85) or 85% methanol (M85)-on photochemistry. These dispersion-box model simulations revealed a strong influence of atmospheric background balance between VOCs and nitrogen oxides (NOX = [NO] + [NO2]) on the impact of exhaust emissions on photochemistry, with higher tendency toward ozone (O3) formation or destruction for more VOC-limited or NOX-limited conditions, respectively. Accordingly, higher [NOX]/[VOC] exhaust emission, such as from diesel and M85, resulted in lower O3, not only locally but also downwind of the emission. This offers a new perspective and measure for transportation fuel assessment. Rapid conversion of O3 to hydroxyl and hydroperoxyl radicals downwind of the exhaust emission indicates the importance of simulating the impact of road transportation on photochemistry at high spatial and temporal resolution. Peroxyacetyl nitrate formation was more sensitive to VOC emission under VOC-limited conditions than to NOX emission under NOX-limited conditions. Secondary formaldehyde dominated over primary emitted formaldehyde several minutes after emission. These findings should be verified using a 3D modeling study under varying meteorological conditions.

Investigation of ozone deposition to vegetation under warm and dry conditions near the Eastern Mediterranean coast.

Dry deposition of ozone (O3) to vegetation is an important removal pathway for tropospheric O3, while O3 uptake through plant stomata negatively affects vegetation and leads to climate change. Both processes are controlled by vegetation characteristics and ambient conditions via complex mechanisms. Recent studies have revealed that these processes can be fundamentally impacted by coastal effects, and by dry and warm conditions in ways that have not been fully characterized, largely due to lack of measurements under such conditions. Hence, we hypothesized that measuring dry deposition of O3 to vegetation along a sharp spatial climate gradient, and at different distances from the coast, can offer new insights into the characterization of these effects on O3 deposition to vegetation and stomatal uptake, providing important information for afforestation management and for climate and air-quality model improvement. To address these hypotheses, several measurement campaigns were performed at different sites, including pine, oak, and mixed Mediterranean forests, at distances of 20-59 km from the Eastern Mediterranean coast, under semiarid, Mediterranean and humid Mediterranean climate conditions. The eddy covariance technique was used to quantify vertical O3 flux (Ftot) and its partitioning to stomatal flux (Fst) and non-stomatal flux (Fns). Whereas Fst tended to peak around noon under humid Mediterranean and Mediterranean conditions in summer, it was strongly limited by drought under semiarid conditions from spring to early winter, with minimum average Fst/Ftot of 8-11% during the summer. Fns in the area was predominantly controlled by relative humidity (RH), whereas increasing Fns with RH for RH < 70% indicated enhancement of Fns by aerosols, via surface wetness stimulation. At night, efficient turbulence due to sea and land breezes, together with increased RH, resulted in strong enhancement of Ftot. Extreme dry surface events, some induced by dry intrusion from the upper troposphere, resulted in positive Fns events.

Measurement-based investigation of ozone deposition to vegetation under the effects of coastal and photochemical air pollution in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Dry deposition of ozone (O3) to vegetation is an important pathway for its removal from the troposphere, and it can lead to adverse effects in plants and changes in climate. However, our mechanistic understanding of O3 dry deposition is insufficient to adequately account for it in global and regional models, primarily because this process is highly complicated by feedback mechanisms and sensitivity to specific characteristics of vegetative environment and atmospheric dynamics and composition. We hypothesized that measuring dry deposition of O3 to vegetation near the Eastern Mediterranean (EM) coast, where large variations in meteorological conditions and photochemical air pollution frequently occur, would enable identifying the mechanisms controlling O3 deposition to vegetation. Moreover, we have only limited knowledge of O3 deposition to vegetation occurring near a coastline, under air pollution, or in the EM. This study investigated O3 deposition to mixed Mediterranean vegetation between the summers of 2015 and 2017, 3.6 km away from the EM coast, using the eddy covariance technique to quantify vertical flux of O3 and its partitioning to stomatal and non-stomatal flux, concurrent with nitrogen oxide (NOx), sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide. Surprisingly, nighttime O3-deposition velocity (Vd) was smaller than daytime Vd by only ~20-37% on average for all measurement periods, primarily related to moderate nighttime atmospheric stability due to proximity to the seashore. We provide evidence for the role of sea-salt aerosols in enhancing O3 deposition via surface-wetness buildup at low relative humidity near the coast, and for daytime enhancement of O3 deposition by the combined effects of biogenic volatile organic compound emission and surface-wetness buildup. We further show that NOx emitted from elevated emission sources can reduce O3 deposition, and even lead to a positive O3 flux, demonstrating the importance of adequately taking into account the impact of air pollution on O3 deposition to vegetation.

Observational Evidence for Involvement of Nitrate Radicals in Nighttime Oxidation of Mercury.

In the atmosphere, reactive forms of mercury species can be produced by oxidation of the dominant gaseous elemental mercury (GEM). The oxidation of GEM is an important driver for deposition, but oxidation pathways currently are poorly constrained and likely differ among regions. In this study, continuous measurements of atmospheric nitrate radical (NO3) concentrations and mercury speciation (i.e., elemental and reactive, oxidized forms) were performed during a six week period in the urban air shed of Jerusalem, Israel during summer 2012, to investigate the potential nighttime contribution of nitrate radicals to oxidized mercury formation. Average nighttime concentrations of reactive gaseous mercury (RGM) were almost equivalent to daytime levels (25 pg m(-3) and 27 pg m(-3) respectively), in contrast to early morning and evening RGM levels which dropped to low levels (9 and 13 pg m(-3)). During daytime, the presence of RGM was increased when solar radiation exceeded 200 W m(-2), suggesting a photochemical process for daytime RGM formation. Ozone concentrations were largely unrelated to daytime RGM. Nighttime RGM concentrations were relatively high (with a maximum of 97 pg m(-3)) compared to nighttime levels in other urban regions. A strong correlation was observed between nighttime RGM concentrations and nitrate radical concentration (R(2) averaging 0.47), while correlations to other variables were weak (e.g., RH; R(2) = 0.35) or absent (e.g., ozone, wind speed and direction, pollution tracers such as CO or SO2). Detailed analyses suggest that advection processes or tropospheric influences were unlikely to explain the strong nighttime correlations between NO3 and RGM, although these processes may contribute to these relationships. Our observations suggest that NO3 radicals may play a role in RGM formation, possibly due to a direct chemical involvement in GEM oxidation. Since physical data, however, suggest that NO3 unlikely initiates GEM oxidation, NO3 may play a secondary role in GEM oxidation through the addition to an unstable Hg(I) radical species.